OVP: Vivacious Lady (1938)

Film: Vivacious Lady (1938)

Stars: Ginger Rogers, James Stewart, James Ellison, Beulah Bondi, Charles Coburn, Frances Mercer, Hattie McDaniel

Director: George Stevens

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Cinematography, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Jimmy Stewart: click here to learn more about Mr. Stewart (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're going to start our look at Jimmy Stewart during the period in the 1930's when he was still starting to make his way up in Hollywood.  During the 1930's, really leading into Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stewart was not thought of as a leading man so much as an actor to put in to prop up more famous, bankable actresses on the lots of major studios (despite being an MGM star at the time, Stewart rarely actually worked for MGM during this time frame).  This included a number of hit movies, including Born to Dance (with Eleanor Powell), You Can't Take It With You (with Jean Arthur), and Destry Rides Again (with Marlene Dietrich), one of his first cowboy roles.  We're going to focus not on Destry today (despite our month-long theme), but instead on Vivacious Lady (don't worry, Jimmy will done a cowboy hat next week), perhaps the best encapsulation of Stewart's pattern at the time-get a big hit where your leading actress gets more of the credit than you do...and also bedding her.  Though he was married to his wife Gloria for 45 years starting in 1949, affable, stuttering Jimmy Stewart was a lothario in his day, dating a variety of actresses, including Ginger Rogers, with whom according to Hollywood legend (how could you ever prove such a thing, but it is apocryphal gossip), he reportedly lost his virginity.  Stewart & Rogers would both move on (with Marlene Dietrich & Howard Hughes, respectively), but we still have Vivacious Lady to judge them by.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Peter Morgan, Jr. (Stewart) a botany professor who is also the son of a prominent university president, Peter Morgan Sr. (Coburn), and thus comes from a "respectable" family who won't like that he's started a romance with a nightclub singer named Francey (Rogers).  This doesn't stop him from eloping with her, though, before she's had a chance to meet her parents or before he's had a chance to break off his engagement to Helen (Mercer).  As a result, they sneak her in as a new botany student he's clearly pursuing, but Peter Sr. doesn't like this, despite the fact that his wife Martha (Bondi) is a fan of the young woman.  Entanglements ensue, including a marvelous little face-off between America's Sweetheart Rogers getting into a hair-pulling fight with Helen, before both Peter Jr. & Sr. have to chase their brides on a train, and win them back (which, of course, they do).

The movie's plot is mildly ridiculous.  Martha likes her daughter-in-law right away, and while Peter Sr. doesn't approve of her, it's clear that he can be won over without much work.  The "family doesn't approve" is a common trope in romantic-comedies, but it's clear in this movie that there's not a lot standing in Peter's way when it comes to getting to marry Francey.  The main reason to watch this is for the cast, which is a delight, but you wish they were in a better movie.  Rogers is not one of my favorites from this era (and Stewart is), but she outdoes him at pretty much every turn.  Romantic comedies were a place that Stewart did well, but when paired with more natural performers in the genre (not just Rogers, but someone like Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story) he occasionally got upstaged.  One of my favorite moments was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo from Hattie McDaniel one year out from her Oscar win for Gone with the Wind, here playing a maid who gets a pretty lascivious comment from Rogers that I'm honestly surprised got past the censors (essentially Rogers hints strongly that a man might be worth giving up smoking for if he's good enough in bed).

The film won two Oscar nominations, neither of which are standouts (and neither is the one night club song that Rogers sings, even though it's the rare song in this era that wasn't a cover in the movie). Cinematography is kind of fun in the close-up shots of Rogers & Stewart teaching, her looking radiant and him clearly smitten (on and off screen) with the actress, but making pretty movie stars look pretty is just as much on the makeup department (and genetics) as it is cinematography, and here there's hardly much else to crow about.  The sound nomination is also odd.  There's only one musical (the aforementioned forgettable tune from Rogers), and the rest of the movie feels like it's just standard-issue sound work.  I'm convinced at this point of profiling dozens of Sound nominations that something changed in the 1960's & later in how this department picked their nominations, as no other category of this era has so many blasé head-scratchers.

OVP: Carefree (1938)

Film: Carefree (1938)

Stars: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Ralph Bellamy, Luella Gear, Jack Carson, Hattie McDaniel

Director: Mark Sandrich

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Art Direction, Scoring, Original Song-"Change Partners")

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

The partnership of Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers is the stuff of cinematic legend, one of the most iconic pairings in Classical Hollywood.  That the two were at best "fine" with the pairing by 1938 was something that was starting to be reflexive in its box office returns.  Carefree, our movie for today, is the eighth in the ten films that the two made together, and was the first movie starring the two not to turn a profit according to box office receipts at the time.  It was also one of the first films in the series to really mess with the formula of the two, being shorter than you normally saw from an Astaire-Rogers picture, and with far less-dancing.  The result is a quirky (the plot is weird if not unpleasant) little musical with much less of what we'd learned to love from the Astaire-Rogers pairings in terms of toe-tapping.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is centered on Tony Flagg (Astaire), a psychiatrist who has been asked by his friend Stephen (Bellamy) to help make his girlfriend Amanda (Rogers) come to a decision on whether they should be married or not.  Amanda is a successful singer, and isn't sure she's ready to give that life up, or if Stephen is the right guy for her.  Tony puts Amanda under hypnosis, and in the process Amanda comes to (in a trance) and starts destroying property & behaving as a menace.  She also, in the process, begins to start having dreams about her doctor, and becomes convinced she's in love with him, not Stephen.  Eventually Tony realizes after putting Amanda under a trance again (where he instructs her to not like him) that he is in love with her, but at that point it's too late...until of course it isn't when in the end Tony interrupts Stephen & Amanda's marriage, and during one more subconscious session, convinces her he loves her.

As I said above, unlike a lot of Astaire/Rogers films, this one has less focus on the dancing than you'd expect.  At this point in their partnership, the public's interest in the couple was waning, and their careers were headed in different directions.  Rogers was on an upswing, as the success of Stage Door proved she didn't really need Astaire, and within a few years, she'd be an Oscar winner & the highest-paid actress in Hollywood.  Astaire, meanwhile, was in the middle of one of his down swings (we think of him as one of the great performers of the Golden Age, which he was, but that was checkered with several comebacks as he went in-and-out of fashion).  The plot is a bit, silly, but it's kind of fun.  It allows Rogers, in particular, some great comedic moments as she has to wander throughout her hypnotized state, oftentimes for laughs.  But I will admit as someone who just adores Fred Astaire, I could've used one or two more musical numbers.

The film won three Oscar nominations.  The art direction is sublime (isn't it always in Astaire-Rogers musicals?), with gigantic ballrooms, large spacious offices, and a glorious wedding hall among the highlights.  It all feels very modern, but in an elegant way...you can definitely see the money that was clearly spent on this film (the first of the pairings partnerships to lose money).  The scoring is good, though as I mentioned there's only really one number that's of note, and the rest is just sort of there (it's lovely, because of the stars, but there's nothing notable here).  The one number that stands out, though not ultimately in the pairings long pantheon of dancing, is "Change Partners," which is the Oscar-nominated turn.  It's sung at the very end of the picture as Fred is trying to woo Ginger away from Ralph Bellamy, and it's quite lovely-sort of this lovelorn song about a man trying to win back a girl who is with someone else.  It became a standard afterward, and it works quite well within the picture.

OVP: Stage Door (1937)

Film: Stage Door (1937)

Stars: Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou, Gail Patrick, Constance Collier, Andrea Leeds, Lucille Ball, Eve Arden, Ann Miller

Director: Gregory La Cava

Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actress-Andrea Leeds, Adapted Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

The "more than five" window of the Best Picture race for the modern Oscars started in 2009, but it wasn't always like that.  Prior to 1944, the Best Picture race was a rotating number, peaking at one point with as many as 12 nominations for the category.  As a result, like today, you get some films that you wonder if they would've been nominated in a five-wide field or not.  That was one of the thoughts I had while watching Stage Door recently, a movie that features a cavalcade of major actresses, not just of that era but more so of the upcoming era; women like Lucille Ball, Eve Arden, & Ann Miller were all breaking out in a big way with this movie.  I was surprised after watching that the film had also been nominated for Best Director, not because it's not well-directed (it is) but because our modern preconceptions of films starring women (and the male-friendly AMPAS) is to assume such a picture can't score both, and thus be one of the "would've made it to five" films (which it appears Stage Door was).

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about a group of women who live in a boardinghouse, many of them aspiring actresses who are trying to land their lucky break.  A new girl, Terry (Hepburn) moves into the house, and her worldly attitude & love of Shakespeare make her an object of ridicule, particularly for Jean (Rogers), a wisecracking dancer who is forced to be her roommate.  It turns out that Terry doesn't need to be there-her father is very wealthy, and she's trying to strike out on her own against his wishes.  The two start to patch things up, and Terry befriends the rest of the girls including unlucky-in-love Judy (Ball), sarcastic Eve (Arden), and especially Kay (Leeds), who is desperate for a part in Anthony Powell's (Menjou) new play.  When Terry gets the part instead (initially on the wishes of her father, who is secretly backing the play in hopes of getting his daughter back after it fails), Kay, frustrated from unemployment & starving for her art, kills herself on opening night.  Terry, bereft from the grief, gives a good performance in the play, and becomes a star.  Despite this, she stays on at the boardinghouse, where her new family resides.

The film is unusual, in that it's clearly meant to be a fluffy, light comedy for the first hour, and then it takes a dark detour in its last few minutes.  The death of Kay is a left field twist, something I didn't really expect (I assumed she'd be rushed to a hospital & get the part that she was meant for that instead went to Hepburn's Terry).  It feels like a cheat to me, and one that kind of leaves a bitter taste in the movie, as it totally upends all of the fast-talking girls, and it feels like it's trying to teach the actresses a lesson that they didn't really deserve-they're just young women trying their best (and Terry's greatest sin was *GASP* being ambitious).  The death of Kay makes the film too off, and while it's still a good movie, it disappears some of the best attributes that made you fall in love with it in the first hour.

The film won four nominations, and three of them I don't have a problem with.  Like I said, this is a good movie, a great one in parts, but it's too sporadic & spastic in the way it handles the genre shift, and so it's simply a good movie.  The direction & writing is in a similar situation-good in both its comedic & dramatic shifts, but it can't combine the two.  Leeds, though, isn't the right fit.  Yes, her character is tragic, but that's all she is-there's no depth here.  It's hard to imagine someone looking at this performance and thinking "best in cast."  Obviously Ginger Rogers & Kate Hepburn aren't supporting parts, but they're both terrific.  Rogers is delicious, some of the best I've seen from her (Rogers was always better in comedy than in drama), and Hepburn is glorious, especially when she has to perform right after Kay's suicide.  If I had to pick a supporting player to honor from the movie, I might go with Eve Arden (though Lucille Ball is good in the role that put her on the map as a character player)-she's quintessential Arden (there's nothing to her Eve), but she (and her cat) steal every scene they do together.

OVP: Flying Down to Rio (1933)

Film: Flying Down to Rio (1933)

Stars: Delores Del Rio, Gene Raymond, Raul Roulien, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire

Director: Thornton Freeland

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"Carioca)...I listed 1933 for this because it came out in 1933, but it's worth remembering that since it came out on December 29th it was eligible at the 1934 Oscars, and that's what the label below is indicating since those are based on Oscar ceremonies more than the actual calendar years.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Few cinematic pairings are linked together in the same way as Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers.  Like Abbott & Costello or Bogart & Bacall, the two are synonymous, and their films are the stuff of legend at this point.  I have seen a chunk (though not a majority of their films), but what I didn't realize when I started watching Flying Down to Rio the other day was that their first film didn't have them in the leads.  Flying Down to Rio is the premiere movie of their ten-picture pairings, and it's also a movie that does feature the two dancing, but they aren't the stars, and their love story (if you can call it that) is ancillary to the plot.

(Spoilers Ahead) While they aren't the leads, this film follows the path of most Astaire/Rogers pictures in that the plot is unneeded at best & mostly a vehicle for singing & dancing, but we'll still give it its paragraph.  Roger Bond (Raymond) is a composer who tours with a band that includes vocalist Honey (Rogers) & assistant band leader Fred (Astaire).  Roger is in love with one of the women in the audience at a show, Belinha (del Rio), who is heavily chaperoned & he's unable to make a play for her.  He finally finds a way by flying her to Rio, and getting to a deserted island when they have to make an emergency landing.  It's clear the two love each other, but Belinha confesses she's engaged.  When they make it to Rio, it turns out that Belinha is engaged to Roger's buddy Julio (Roulien), and a love triangle emerges between the three, which Julio concedes after realizing that Belinha is in love with Fred and not him.

The main plot is blasé, and not worth our time.  Del Rio would be a big star in her era, but neither she nor Raymond have the same level of ubiquity that Rogers & Astaire do because they aren't that good-the chemistry between the two is middling, while the latter's is dynamic (there's a reason that they were given movies together after this...it's like watching lightning-in-a-bottle when they're onscreen together for the first time).  If you're someone who is solely interested in scripts or plot, this is not a good fit for you.

That being said, Flying Down to Rio is fun.  The repartee between Astaire & Rogers is delicious (and sometimes a bit salacious...this is pre-Code, after all), and their dancing is dynamite.  It's easy to see why "Carioca," an otherwise bland & ineffectual song, got nominated for an Oscar, and it's because they were basically just nominating the Astaire/Rogers dance routine.  Del Rio's famous bikini scene is played without too much notice (she was the first actress to appear in a bikini in a major studio film)-no wolf whistles or bug eyes, but the movie's other major calling card, the incredible trick photography that made it seem like a bunch of chorus girls are dancing on the wings of a plane is awe-inspiring.  Linwood Dunn (the genius behind the visual trickery of King Kong, Citizen Kane, and the original Star Trek TV series) was behind this, and it's amazing.  Obviously a modern audience can see the way he did this, but compared to other films of its era it's extraordinary, and clearly influential.  Astaire/Rogers and Dunn's "aerial ballet" are worth the price of admission even if you might not be vested in del Rio & Raymond's listless affair.

OVP: Bachelor Mother (1939)

Film: Bachelor Mother (1939)
Stars: Ginger Rogers, David Niven, Charles Coburn, Frank Albertson
Director: Garson Kanin
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Motion Picture Story)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I interact a lot with "Film Twitter," a subset of the social media platform that focuses on movies, frequently related to awards season & the classical era of Hollywood.  In doing so, you discover a lot of hidden gems, and occasionally find people who put your own (over-zealous) movie-watching habits to shame.  You also learn that your own prejudices against certain old-time movie stars are not universally held.  I have not really found the right role to love Ginger Rogers, something that I'm in the minority here (she seems quite popular on Film Twitter), but she's not my cup-of-tea.  Her performances are too earnest, her dramatics paling to someone like Barbara Stanwyck or Joan Crawford.  But I'm open to new ideas, and always game for liking Rogers more than I currently do, and Bachelor Mother might have posed a turning point for me.  I loved this movie, even if it was as shallow as a teaspoon, and Rogers (with the help of David Niven) might be finally turning me around on her specific set of talents.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is short, so not a lot of plot, but here goes.  Polly (Rogers) is a salesgirl at the John B. Merlin and Son company in New York City.  She loses her job as a temporary sales clerk after the holidays, but on her way home she discovers a baby that someone has left on the steps of an orphanage.  Through a confusion that could only happen in the movies, the orphanage, as well as "the son" of her department store's name, David (Niven), assume the baby is hers, and it's born out-of-wedlock.  Not wanting to fire an unwed mother, and make her give up her baby, David rehires her, and starts to show an interest in this woman who keeps claiming the baby isn't hers.  As the film goes on, Polly & David start to fall in love, and David's father (Coburn) assumes the baby is his new grandson.  In the end, David claims the baby is his, making his father happy that he finally gets to be a grandfather, and Polly gets the untraditional family she wanted, having now fallen in love with both David and the baby.

The movie is silly, and if the plot sounds familiar, it was remade in the 1950's as Bundle of Joy with Debbie Reynolds & Eddie Fisher.  But silly is fine if it's done well, and Bachelor Mother is a really lovely little movie.  At this point in his career, Niven would've been teetering between stardom and becoming a high-profile character actor (just a few months before this movie was released, he'd taken on the third-billed Edgar Linton role in Wuthering Heights).  This movie was a major hit, and made him an established star.  There's a reason for that-Rogers & Niven have great chemistry onscreen.  While I always love David Niven in movies, Ginger Rogers steals several scenes from him & this is a plucky side of her that I've never seen done so well in a romantic comedy.  She's delicious when she's playing along as a Swedish girl who is trying to prove to Niven's ex that she's an improvement on her, and even in the film's softer moments she has a warmth that radiates & keeps the movie from going to darker places around her situation (like how, say, we shouldn't think too much on the biological mother who had to give up this baby, as she was likely in the actual scenario that Polly is only hypothetically in).

The film won one Oscar nomination, for Best Motion Picture Story (thus finishing off our theme week of writing nominations at the Oscars).  While the script isn't perfect (it's predictable & Rogers other love interest is underwritten), the story & idea behind are original and charming.  I left Bachelor Mother dually impressed how spry it was, and how a potentially repetitive plot is played for increasing absurdity & laughs.  Bachelor Mother is a good reminder after a week of heavy pictures & across-the-board reviews that movies sometimes work best when they simply allow you to forget your troubles & be entertained.

The Hard Way (1943)

Film: The Hard Way (1943)
Stars: Ida Lupino, Joan Leslie, Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson, Gladys George
Director: Vincent Sherman
Oscar History: The film received no Oscar nominations, but Lupino won the New York Film Critics Circle Award, and was clearly close to being an Oscar nomination.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Ida Lupino-click here to learn more about Ms. Lupino (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Our "Saturdays with the Stars" series this season has focused on actresses who were major names in their era, but never received the blessing of Oscar-women that couldn't quite translate their names above the title into at least one citation from AMPAS.  That doesn't mean, however, that these women didn't come close to getting nominated.  Our series features three Golden Globe nominees (Cyd Charisse, Ruth Roman, and the woman whom we'll feature next month), as well as Linda Darnell, who was in serious conversation for a nomination at least twice (for Fallen Angel and A Letter to Three Wives), but none got quite as close as Ida Lupino in The Hard Way.  Only six women have ever won the NYFCC Award for Best Actress and not been an Oscar nominee eventually (and four are still alive, so they could well shorten that list)-one of them is Lupino.  She was widely assumed at the time, in fact, to be Warner's best shot at a contender in the Best Actress race, but a surprise nomination for Joan Fontaine in The Constant Nymph robbed Lupino of her only real shot at a nomination.  Let's see if Oscar got it wrong, shall we?

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is centered around two sisters Helen (Lupino) and Katie Chernan (Leslie).  The movie watches as Helen wishes of getting out of a loveless marriage by any means necessary, and views her beautiful younger sister's show business dreams as a way to get there.  They cut a lucky break when Katie marries Albert Runkel (Carson), one half of a vaudeville duo who, along with the handsome Paul Collins (Morgan), whom Helen is drawn to, welcome Katie into their act and eventually Katie has eclipsed both of them, thanks to Helen's guiding hand.  The movie continues with Helen driving her sister further into stardom but in more nefarious ways, sacrificing her romantic happiness (twice) and once even ruining the chances of an alcoholic former starlet (played in a terrific little part by Gladys George) at a comeback.  The film ends with Katie finally giving up her sister to pursue Paul (long after first husband Albert has died from suicide), and Helen attempts suicide herself, realizing that she's given up so much of her life for a sister who wants nothing to do with her.

The film is fascinating even if it's heavy-handed.  The movie is a thinly-veiled (but still fictional) look at the early career of Ginger Rogers, with Lupino taking on the role of Rogers' notoriously ambitious mother Lela.  It'd have been more interesting if they'd stuck to Rogers' real-life, however, as the film's first half is considerably better than the second half, when the movie decides to treat Lupino like a villain rather than how she'd be treated today, as a cutthroat businesswoman who is determined to succeed (which, admittedly, some men would still consider a villain but I'm gay so I had more of a "YASS KWEEN!" reaction to Lupino throughout this movie).  In real life, Rogers didn't give up her career for a man-she in fact had one of the most storied, sustained careers in Hollywood for most of the Golden Age, but was never lucky in romance-she was married five times, and all marriages ended in divorce, and without children.  Rogers was by pretty much anyone's definition one of the most successful women of her era, but this movie's anti-feminist leanings toward the end would have indicted her in real life (by way of Katie) for choosing her flourishing career over a man who wanted her to be his maid & cook, and celebrate only his victories.  It's really disappointing that this is how this movie ended up, rather than emulating a film like All About Eve a few years later where the main character got to be both successful and have a love life, but the writers insist that we laud Katie for wanting marriage more than a career, and attempt to kill off Helen for doing the same.

That being said, the acting is swell here.  I already lauded George, but Leslie is good in her naive (but not fully naive) role as Katie, always willing to look the other way even when she knows what her sister is doing (still-one wonders what someone like Judy Garland, a more singular talent, would have done with this role).  Best of the bunch, though, is Lupino.  I'm still deciding who my favorite stars are of the women we've profiled in this series, but I can say without much hesitation that Lupino is the best actor of the bunch.  She knows what she's got with a complicated, complete role like Helen, and she nails it, finding nuance, verve, and just enough melodrama to elevate the movie in ways the script can't seem to understand.  This is the best performance we've seen from her, and while I haven't completed the 1943 Oscar lineup list, Lupino would have been a really worthy inclusion as a nominee.  It's hard not to think of what that would have meant for her career (considering how much Warner Brothers was dominating that particular ceremony with Casablanca and Watch on the Rhine, she might even have won!).  Instead, her acting career would begin to wane soon after this, and her cinematic career would take a decidedly different turn...but we'll get into that next week.

OVP: Tom, Dick, and Harry (1941)

Film: Tom, Dick, and Harry (1941)
Stars: Ginger Rogers, George Murphy, Alan Marshal, Burgess Meredith
Director: Garson Kanin
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Oh, Ginger Rogers, you harlot you.  That was the goal of this particular film, at least from the producers eyes, for you and the audience to say with a grin on your face.  Tom, Dick, and Harry, a film that received an original screenplay nomination in 1941, was released during the height of Rogers post-Fred Astaire heyday, and was the first film to come out after she won her Oscar for Kitty Foyle.  All of this should lend a pretty respectable amount of credence to the film, but the movie itself is a bit of a dud, and sort of exhibits why I've always had a little bit of an allergic reaction to Rogers, particularly when her dancing party Fred wasn't in the picture.

(Spoilers Ahead) For starters, Rogers is far too old to be playing the role of Janie, a young phone operator who is put in the strange position of being proposed to by three different men.  The part calls for a girl of about twenty, but Rogers is thirty and looks it, which makes her flightiness seem more of a character deficit rather than simply an excuse of youth.  The movie follows as she is proposed to by her longtime beau Tom (Murphy), a hippie-before-that-was-a-thing Harry (Meredith), and a gallant millionaire playboy Dick (Marshal), until of course she is forced to choose one of the three men.

The film is quite short, and is lengthened mostly by elongated sequences of Janie daydreaming about which of the men she wants to spend her life with, including one weirdly provocative moment where she thinks about marrying all three until she realizes that she'll have to sleep with all three men (one of several reasons why this film could never be remade now, as a post-sexual revolution film would see this as a bonus and not a dealbreaker).  Janie in the end picks Harry, the one whom she feels a ping for every time that they kiss, though we get no indication as to why except for that there's a spark there and the film feels far too trifling for my sake in this regard.

After all, quite frankly, it's hard to imagine why (aside from beauty) these men crave Janie, who is silly, flighty, false, and shows little regard for any of them as people, but simply as sides of beef to be graded.  However, considering that's what they're doing to her by only judging her for being beautiful, perhaps this is a match made in heaven.  For the audience, however, the silliness wares after a while and the fact that the characters are all pretty shallow and complete caricatures makes for a lousy film experience.  It's difficult to understand why a film that has a severe shortage of wit and plot twists was able to score a nomination for its writing, but perhaps it was the fact that the movie was a hit and RKO wanted to continue to push Ms. Rogers since she was such a gigantic part of their bottom line at the time.  Whatever the reason, it's laughable to think this once competed against Citizen Kane.

Those are my thoughts on this dismissible trifle-how about yours?  Are you a big fan of Ginger Rogers, or are you (like me) perplexed how she became such a gigantic name at the movies?  Why do you think this film managed a writing nomination?  And would you have picked Burgess Meredith, Alan Marshal, or George Murphy for yourself?  Share in the comments!

OVP: Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)

Film: Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)
Stars: Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, Walter Slezak, Albert Dekker, Albert Bassermann
Director: Leo McCarey
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Sound Recording)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

There are occasions when I'm watching old movies that I have to check and double check what year the movie was made.  This is because, thanks to a bit of knowledge regarding history, I'm well aware that a certain movie's mood and atmosphere will greatly influence what's happening onscreen.  This was something I was made aware of while I was watching the Leo McCarey dramedy (before that word became popular) Once Upon a Honeymoon.  The film, led by spry romantic comedy stars Ginger Rogers and Cary Grant (random fact: depending on what part of the country you were in depends on who got top billing for the film, though TCM listed Grant first so that's where we'll go too) seems at first to be a pretty distastefully light comedy, making light of Nazism and Rogers' Katie's naivete regarding such subjects before the film eventually meanders into a more traditional romantic output.  As a result, we get a good movie that works on both levels, but probably would have been considerably better if it'd just stuck with one.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Katie O'Hara (Rogers), a former stripper who is pretending to be a wealthy socialite in Austria in hopes of nabbing a rich husband.  She finds one in a Baron von Luber (Slezak, in his first Hollywood role), but doesn't count on the fact that he's a Nazi sympathizer that is scouting out different locales before the Nazi invade.  As a result, we get an inappropriately hilarious (there's a LOT of black comedy in this movie, which I wasn't remotely expecting from these two prim-and-proper movie stars) series of scenes where Rogers is perplexed as to why Hitler keeps invading every country they visit on their honeymoon (this was made in 1942...that's dark).

She meets in the opening scenes a man named Pat O'Toole whom she initially distrusts (thinking he's just trying to use her husband and her marriage to sell his radio show), but eventually trusts and falls in love with, realizing that she has to leave her husband before it's too late.  Before she does that, though, she's convinced by an American spy (Dekker) to try and get information from von Luber, and in the process gets the operative killed and herself trapped.  She's eventually saved in a comic moment where O'Toole starts to talk (on-the-air) about how von Luber fancies himself the next Fuhrer, and gets in trouble with Hitler.  The film ends in an extremely black comic way, with von Luber thrown overboard off-screen by Katie, with she and O'Toole convincing the ship's captain to turn the ship around, and then her telling the captain that von Luber can't swim, resulting in him exasperatingly turning the ship around again (without the usual somberness that accompanies a classic movie death).

The film's weird shifts in tone are interesting to say the least.  I kind of wished, in hindsight, that they had just gone all-in with the black comedy, a sort of Great Dictator for the romantic comedy set, though that would have been preposterous for someone as socially conservative as Rogers in particular (who was a major star at the time so no one was forcing her to do this film-I'm surprised she signed up for it).  The two leads have tremendously fun chemistry, and when they're flirting it's glorious, but the heavy-handed shifts eventually wear on the audience and you wish they'd just pick a genre.

The film received a sole Oscar nomination, for Sound Recording, which seems very weird for a movie that has no musical numbers and minimal wartime effects (there's maybe one bomb that goes off and one water scene, which is usually how these nominations are won).  As a result, we don't see a lot of credence for this except perhaps RKO was short on contenders in this category.  Either way, I'm glad I saw this oddly-toned film even if its Oscar nomination was totally unwarranted.

How about you-have you seen Once Upon a Honeymoon?  If so, what were your thoughts on its tone and nomination?  If not, what do you think of Rogers and Grant in general, and do you ever find yourself researching what was going on around a particular film?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

OVP: The Barkleys of Broadway (1949)

Film: The Barkleys of Broadway
Stars: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Oscar Levant, Billie Burke
Director: Charles Walters
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

The films of Astaire and Rogers have never known for what one would consider particularly compelling screenwriting.  No one went to these films, which inevitably had the two playing dancers of some sort who fall in love or re-fall in love, because the plotting was particularly wonderful.  They went because these were two spry and gay performers, quite adept at musical comedy, and of course they went to see the dancing.  This is true even for their last outing (and their only picture where they weren't at RKO), but I will say that the film does veer a bit more into the fine acting sphere than I was expecting.  Perhaps because Rogers wasn't the first choice for the role (Judy Garland was, but she was fighting off her first major round of demons and losing multiple major roles at the time) the film touches on some more interesting plotting in between your standard Astaire-Rogers storytelling.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is the story of a wildly popular husband-and-wife musical comedy team who have different views about where their careers should head.  Josh (Astaire) is fine where they are, while Dinah (Rogers) wants to try something a bit different, and is wooed by a french director into playing a young Sarah Bernhardt on-stage.  The two fight over this, and eventually break up, with Josh having a solo act and Dinah struggling with turning into a dramatic actor.  Eventually Josh realizes that Dinah is struggling, and doing a French accent, coaches her over the phone while imitating the director and she becomes a smash success.  Dinah learns that Josh has been coaching her and she runs back into his arms, happily ever after.

The film may have been written with Judy in mind, but it weirdly mirrored Ginger Rogers' life in reality.  Rogers, by most accounts, was tired of playing opposite Astaire in only musical comedies at the end of the 1930's and wanted to be taken seriously as a dramatic actress.  She succeeded in this venture, even earning an Oscar for Kitty Foyle, but by the time 1949 rolled around her career had subsided a bit and she needed a jolt, which re-teaming with her old dancing buddy surely seemed like it could be.  Her work here is fascinating in some ways-she's clearly a bit out-of-practice in terms of dancing (Astaire gets some of the harder aspects of the numbers), but she's quite good at selling her dramatic scenes in a way I haven't seen before from Ginger Rogers-I loved the way that she seems sort of distant and informed when flattery turns to insults.  It's a strong piece of work from an actor who admittedly isn't one of my favorites.  Astaire, on the other hand, seems a bit on autopilot here (though he's still marvelous in the dancing numbers, particularly the green-screen assisted "Shoes with Wings On,"), and isn't as exciting as Rogers.

The film received one Oscar nomination, for Best Cinematography.  It's obvious to see why-it's not just the joy of seeing Astaire and Rogers in-color (this was their only film not in black-and-white), but it's also that the film knows to use larger, richer colors for the Technicolor palette.  The nomination is helped by being for legendary cinematographer Harry Stradling, who won two Oscars and 14 nominations in his career.  I will say that it doesn't have the naturalistic sensibility of some of the outdoor films of the time (the lighting seems a bit staged), but it's still quite beautiful.

Overall, though, I will say that the film was fine but not good-the script itself has interesting touches, but is too routine to reward the actual picture instead of just the leading lady.  Therefore I'll go with two-stars, though if you're a fan of musicals or Ginger Rogers in particular this is worth your time.  If you've seen it (or if you have a favorite Rogers/Astaire musical), pipe up in the comments!

AFI's 25 Greatest Actresses, Part 2

Yesterday we started in on the AFI's 25 Greatest Actresses, chronicling my favorite performances and the biggest missing parts of their respective canons.  We'll continue on with the next eight women on the list right now (if you haven't read the first half, make sure to click here for a rundown).

9. Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992)

Oscar Nominations: Dietrich would only receive one Oscar nomination in her career, for Morocco, but would lose to Marie Dressler in Min and Bill.
Probably Best Known Today For: This is one of those cases where I just don't think Dietrich is known today (aside from being in the "Vogue" lyrics) to the general populace.  Dietrich's face is likely recognizable and highly distinctive, but her work and films are pretty much non-existent to today's audience, and they probably confuse her with Garbo (which is a pity, but this is the "being honest" portion of these write-ups-if you don't know her or haven't seen one of her movies, get thyself to your Netflix queue and put off watching another season of a television show and watch a movie...or better yet, share your love of her in the comments!).
My Favorite Performance: I have tragically never seen any of her work in the Josef von Sternberg films, so I will go with her wonderful extended cameo in Touch of Evil, where she gets to say those immortal words "he was some kind of man...what does it matter what you say about people?"
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: So many of the von Sternberg classics, chief amongst them would have to be The Blue Angel, which really made Dietrich into a major star.

10. Joan Crawford (1904-1977)

Oscar Nominations: Crawford would receive three Oscar nominations in her career, winning for her first in Mildred Pierce.
Probably Best Known Today For: Faye Dunaway's portrayal of her in the camp classic Mommie Dearest.  More people associate Crawford with wire hangers than anything in her extremely long cinematic career.
My Favorite Performance: Crawford was actually quite a fine actor, never better than in the classic soap opera Mildred Pierce, where she played the most devoted of mothers to the daughter from hell (a bit of an inverse to what Christina wrote about her in her infamous biography).  Deliciously, Crawford's longtime nemesis Bette Davis was originally supposed to have the part, but turned it down; Crawford went on to win her only Academy Award for the role.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have seen almost all of the iconic Crawford films (Grand Hotel, The Women, Mildred Pierce, and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane), so I'll probably go with her other two Oscar-nominated films: Possessed and Sudden Fear.

11. Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990)

Oscar Nominations: Stanwyck would receive four Oscar nominations in her career, but never actually won any of them.  She would receive an Honorary Oscar, however, in 1982 for her body of cinematic work.
Probably Best Known Today For: It depends on whom you ask.  If I'm saying my generation, Stanwyck is not a particularly well-known star, but she did have enormous success in the 1980's so the generation a bit older than me would surely say her work in The Thorn Birds.
My Favorite Performance: I'm going to go cliche two times in a row here.  There's no beating Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce and there's no beating Barbara Stanwyck as the scheming femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity.  Stanwyck owns the screen in this performance-frequently trading that biting wit that she shared so well in a movie like The Lady Eve in for a crackling, cruel evil.  Spellbinding for anyone who loves noir.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have never seen her work in the classic King Vidor weepie Stella Dallas, nor have I seen her in her acclaimed television performance in The Thorn Birds.

12. Claudette Colbert (1903-1996)

Oscar Nominations: Colbert would receive three Oscar nominations in her career, winning for her classic It Happened One Night in 1934.
Probably Best Known Today For: Those gams of hers.  Seriously-you'd be hard-pressed to find a more famous scene in pre-Golden Age cinema than Claudette Colbert lifting her skirt and showing her legs while hitchhiking with Clark Gable.
My Favorite Performance: Most definitely her work in It Happened One Night.  Few people can easily make chemistry look so effortless and smitten as Colbert and Gable do in this film, and this is really one of the high points in the romantic comedy genre.  If you haven't seen it, make sure to add it to the top of your To Do list.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: With all due respect to Ms. Colbert, nothing else in her filmography really compares to her work in the Frank Capra classic, at least in terms of critical acclaim. I would probably go with one of her sexually suggestive Cecil B. DeMille roles, since Colbert would always be a bit more innocent in the years that followed onscreen (perhaps 1934's Cleopatra, a Best Picture nominee).

13. Grace Kelly (1929-1982)

Oscar Nominations: Kelly would receive two Oscar nominations during her career, winning in 1954 for The Country Girl.
Probably Best Known Today For: Almost certainly best known today for her romantic relationship with Prince Rainier of Monaco, and as his consort of over 25 years.  Grace Kelly has also become incredibly well-known as the ideal of pristine beauty and poise, and is one of the most emulated stars of her era.
My Favorite Performance: I'm not wild about Grace Kelly as an actress (as a celebrity, she has few equals), but far-and-away my favorite bits of her work are in Hitchcock's films, particularly Rear Window, where she's the perfect untouchable beauty for a wheelchair-bound Jimmy Stewart to obsess over.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Kelly has one of (if not the) shortest filmographies of any of these 25 women, and I've seen most of the classics (High Noon, To Catch a Thief, Rear Window, The Country Girl), so I'm going to have to go with her other Oscar-nominated performance in Mogambo for my selection.

14. Ginger Rogers (1911-1995)

Oscar Nominations: Rogers would only receive one Oscar nomination in her career (for Kitty Foyle), though she had the good sense to win for it.  This was the first year that they didn't announce the winners ahead of time, and so she didn't know she was about to top Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis, Numbers 1 and 2 on AFI's list.
Probably Best Known Today For: Her longtime dancing partnership with Fred Astaire, which kept the champagne flowing at RKO and made her a fortune, even if they both mildly resented the fact that the public demanded them be together (both would enjoy long careers outside of their ten films together).
My Favorite Performance: You can't really beat Top Hat or Swing Time, and I've always felt picking between the two to be a bit of a chore.  I'd probably go with a slight tip toward Swing Time for Rogers work, though I think Top Hat may be the better picture.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have stunningly never seen Rogers' 1933 classic 42nd Street, where she plays "Anytime Annie" (and which made her a star).

15. Mae West (1893-1980)

Oscar Nominations: West, much like Marilyn Monroe (who clearly borrowed a bit from her look), would never be nominated for or win an Academy Award.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being synonymous with sex and sexual come-ons.  Her "why don't you come up and see me sometime" is a pick-up line for the ages, and no drag queen's oeuvre is complete without donning Mae West's platinum blonde hair and bodacious plunging necklines.
My Favorite Performance: None of the Mae West pictures (which are very few, I must confess) that I have seen are particularly good, but her real triumph was always being Mae West.  Some of these women are on her because they are great actresses or because they are great movie stars.  Mae West is on here because she is one of Hollywood's best ever celebrities, which is a performance unto itself.  If I had to pick a film, it would be She Done Him Wrong (she's by far the best and only reason to see the movie, and it stars Cary Grant so that's saying something), a film at the peak of her fame and one that likely kept the lights on at Paramount.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Definitely Klondike Annie, generally considered to be her finest work and another film from her early-mid thirties period of peak fame.

16. Vivien Leigh (1913-1967)

Oscar Nominations: Leigh would receive just two Oscar nominations in her career, but boy howdy were they earned for Gone with the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire (she won for both).  It's hard to imagine an actor ever winning a pair of Oscars and being more deserving.
Probably Best Known Today For: Her role as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, one of those rare classics that keeps its luster decade-after-decade, and her role at its center keeps her permanently in the public consciousness.
My Favorite Performance: Leigh is one of my all-time favorite actors, and part of me could just sit here going on-and-on about her brilliance in Gone with the Wind or how anyone who wants to spend a couple of hours watching a forgotten masterpiece should give Waterloo Bridge (I LOVE THIS MOVIE!!!!) a shot, but you cannot beat Blanche DuBois.  This is, in my opinion, a tie for the greatest performance ever captured on film (oddly enough, the other greatest performance ever captured on film is also in this movie, which is why I forgive myself for a tie).  A Streetcar Named Desire is the reason I first fell in love with the cinema, and will always be my favorite Leigh performance.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Her two Oscar-winning films are really the reasons she's on this list, but Leigh did make a number of other pictures, and probably the most notable of the ones I'm missing is The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone.

And there we have our middle eight on the list.  We'll finish up the list tomorrow, including getting to the lady that inspired this countdown, Ms. Lauren Bacall (and I have a couple of other articles in mind before we close out this actress love-in), but first, there are eight brilliant women listed above-which is your favorite performer, what are your favorite performances of them, and most importantly, what film are you going to see next that stars one of them?  Share in the comments!